


Clarity and Truth

by SoftButchCassidy



Series: Aurora and Mikris (and friends!) [3]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Origin Story, Vex conversion, Vexo OC, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22500187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoftButchCassidy/pseuds/SoftButchCassidy
Summary: Dr. Atlas Kaito is a brilliant xenobiologist, one of the best working at Ishtar. He's made a breakthrough in his research with the strange robots... but just a little too late. They will never leave him again. Not in this life or the next... or the next.
Relationships: Asher Mir/Original Character(s)
Series: Aurora and Mikris (and friends!) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1496270
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Clarity and Truth

**Author's Note:**

> i cant believe i forgot to upload this  
> "clarity and truth" references the way eris and asher use "clarity in action" and "truth in action" in their letters to each other

“Dr. Kaito?”

“Valerie, hello.”

Atlas Kaito’s lab assistant looked at the vials in front of him uncertainly. “What are you doing, Doctor?”

He hummed and checked the salinity of the solution. “The same thing I’ve been doing.”

“Trying to… see what that stuff does when introduced to biological matter,” she said.

“Yep.”

“But,” Valerie objected, “you’ve been testing this for the past two years! It’s never done anything besides kill them.”

“No,” he said. His dark eyes were bright with discovery. He stepped back from the table and gestured for her to follow.

She shadowed him out of the lab and through the halls. Her unease grew as she followed him to the animal testing rooms. “Sir?”

Atlas waved her inside. 

Valerie waited as he retrieved a cage. “I contacted Dr. Sundaresh about these things,” he explained over the sounds of the animals. “She found something… interesting. So naturally, I had to test it.”

“Naturally,” Valerie repeated flatly.

He laughed and carefully set the cage on the table. He reached in with heavily gloved hands and pulled out a… 

“What the fuck is that?”

He grinned, sharp. “I have no goddamn idea.” 

It had been a rat, once. Now the poor beast was a hideous amalgamation of machine and animal, bronze plating showing through patches of collagen-ragged flesh, its breathing harsh and shrill, its limbs twitching. 

She stared at it in disgust and horror.

“I feel absolutely wretched about this thing,” Atlas said, voice soft and serious. His grin had faded. “I’d kill it if it wasn’t so valuable to science. It’s suffering. This… this stuff, it’s… organic. It’s some kind of nano-organism. Not micro, it’s not really… like any sort of biological thing we’ve ever encountered before. But it works nearly… like a virus.”

Her eyes widened. 

“But it infects everything. Everything! I don’t understand it yet. These things, it… they convert matter into themselves. Not just organic matter. Dr. Sundaresh has tried. It’s incredibly bizarre and… terrifying.”

“But how does it…”

“I don’t know.” He gingerly nudged the malformed rat. “I have no idea. How does their alternate dimension of time bullshit work? I don’t know if we’ll ever know.”

“Sir, if… if they can do this…” Valerie gestured at the rat. “Then… what’s to stop them from doing this to the entire planet?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “The Traveler, if I had to guess. I don’t think it made them, though. These things were here before it got here… maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“Time bullshit.”

Valerie shook her head. 

Atlas picked up the rat again and examined its leg. Or, what he guessed was its leg, probably. “These things are so… weird. I’ve been studying them for years, and I still don’t understand anything about them. I’ve been thinking about asking if I can transfer to Dr. Sundaresh’s team for a while, at least, to see if anything they’ve found with the alternate dimension thing might help me with what I’m d--”

The rat seized.

Atlas gasped and leaned in to see if it was dying. 

White liquid dripped from its mouth.

“Oh, God, the conversion’s reached its throat,” he said, equally fascinated and horrified. “It’s salivating the same organic liquid that these robots are…”

“Doctor, wait!”

Valerie had seen its twitch before he had, but too late.

The rat lunged.

Atlas yelped as needle-sharp teeth plunged into his arm, just above where his protective gloves ended. A burning hot electric pain lanced through his entire body. 

Valerie snatched a fire blanket and yanked the rat off his arm. She shoved it into the cage and slammed the lock. 

Atlas stared at the bleeding bite wound on his arm, staining the sleeve of his coat red. 

“Doctor,” Valerie said urgently, panicking. 

Atlas slowly looked up at her. “Valerie,” he whispered. “Valerie, I’m going to die.”

Her eyes widened. “No, no, we need to rinse it out, we have to call emergency--”

“God, oh God.” Atlas could feel it. Electricity in his veins, each pulse of his heart moving the tiny nanoorganisms through his bloodstream. “I can’t… It’s not… I…”

Valerie was grabbing the emergency phone as Atlas’ vision went blurry and he slumped to the floor.

***

“Wow.”

Atlas grinned wryly and extended his hand. “Apologies, Dr. Bray,” he said dryly. “Normally, I’d offer to shake with my other hand, but…”

Anastasia Bray accepted his handshake, but her eyes were on his other hand. “It… looks a lot more painful in real life,” she said, finally dragging her eyes back to his face.

He grimaced. “Yeah, a little.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Atlas shook his head. “The sooner we can do this… the better. You’re speaking to a dying man, Dr. Bray.”

She winced. “Of course. Elsie, my sister, she should have everything set up by now.”

“Yes, we’ve spoken.” He nodded as he followed her. The facility was massive, with the nearly functioning Warmind looming above it. “And I’ve already granted permission for Clovis Bray and Ishtar to examine my body once the process has been completed.”

“Together, of course,” she said. She seemed a naturally cheerful person, but was trying to keep herself toned down. “As… fascinating as it is, I… wish it were under different circumstances.”

He snorted. “You and me both, Doctor.”

“You don’t need to call me that.”

“Oh, thank God.” He gave her a tired smile. “Same here. Just Atlas.”

“Ana.”

“Pleasure, Ana. Shame that this will be our last conversation.”

“No, that isn’t true.”

He followed her into the building. It was bustling with people, mostly scientists and guards. Glowing eyes followed him, zeroing in on his twitching metal arm. “Well, the last conversation that this mouth will ever have. It’s a strange thing to think… I’m letting you all kill me.”

She winced. “It’s not…”

“The process of neuromapping does kill the body of the person. I know how it works, Ana, I’ve done my research.”

“Yes… that’s true.” She frowned. “Still…”

“Let a man approaching his deathbed have a little gallows humor,” he said. “At least I’m dying for science.”

“We’ll make sure that it works,” she said softly. “I promise. I’ll do everything I can, Atlas.”

“I appreciate it.”

Ana paused and bit her lip. She grabbed him by the arm suddenly and tugged him into a room. She tapped her keycard to the door and it closed. Before he could ask what the hell she was doing, she hissed something in Russian into her earpiece, and the room went nearly black.

“Rasputin is making sure no one else can hear us right now,” she whispered. “Atlas, I know that my family’s company has done some fucked-up things. You know that. Everyone knows that. Elsie and I are trying all we can to stop it, but we can’t do everything. You’re an experiment that we don’t know will succeed. If you survive this, you might go insane. Other exos have died from having their memories restored. They’ve killed themselves. Their entire neuromaps were destroyed. So we manipulate memories. None of them can be deleted. You have to remember that. We can’t delete anything forever. I’m going to put a chip with your neuromap into your arm. It’ll automatically update with everything that you learn that isn’t manipulated later. Use it. When I get a chance, I’ll show you how. I promise.”

He could barely see the amber of her eyes in the shadow. “Ana…”

“The Traveler didn’t come here and bless humanity to let us do things that my family has been doing. Manipulating the way people think… it’s wrong.” Ana sighed. “And you’re a good person. From what I’ve heard about you, you were trying to see if the robot nanites could be used to heal people.”

“Worked like a charm.”

She scoffed. “Atlas, listen. I can’t promise that everything will be perfect. But Elsie and I will both try to do what we can to make sure that you remember yourself.”

“Thank you, Ana.”

She murmured in Russian, and the lights blinked back on. “Well, Doctor, let’s go upload your brain.”

***

“Hello, Doctor Kaito.”

Green eyes blinked and looked up. “Elsie?” Atlas asked in confusion.

Elsie Bray looked surprised. “Oh. Oh, do you… remember?”

“That you and Ana both asked me to use nicknames?” He snorted. “Yeah, of course I do. Was that one that they were gonna wipe?”

She winced. “I can’t be sure… and that’s not how it works.”

He waved a hand at her. “Yeah, yeah.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “So what’d they find? Autopsy all done? Sheesh, that’s weird to think about.”

“Yes,” she said. “The initial one, at least. You approved three.”

“Yeah.” Atlas turned around in his chair and was surprised by a heap of papers being held out to him. “Whoa. Archaic.”

Her jaw glowed with a wry grin. “It’s highly secret, you understand. We can’t afford to have information about a man being turned into a machine just floating around in the network.”

“Well, now I’m twice the machine I ever was.”

“Atlas,” she said.

He took the stack of reports. “So when’s the next memory dump?”

“Tomorrow, if you’re ready.”

“What am I getting back?”

“Your final year of university, I believe.”

“Oh, good, I was wondering what I did.” He snorted. “This is still so weird.”

“It was odd for me, too.”

Atlas tapped his fingers on the papers, feeling the texture underneath his sensors. “Elsie…?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know that your memories are yours?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

She tapped her wrist, then held her finger to her mouth. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Doctor.”

Atlas watched her leave. He looked at his wrist and pressed his thumb against the pad of his hand. 

The metal plate of his forearm slid apart. A tiny data chip was planted within his arm.

***

Atlas had been away from Earth for so long, he’d thought he’d forgotten what the sea smelled like.

It plagued his dreams. 

He walked through canyons of cold pale stone, across fields of pink grass, over hot red sand. 

Salt. 

He saw things he didn’t understand. Tiny floating drones, alien creatures with four arms, humans with blue skin and glowing eyes. Worse things--monsterous things with gnashing teeth and jagged swords, twitching shadowy figures. Vex.

So many Vex.

He could smell salt when he woke up.

“Elsie.”

The scientist looked up with a hum.

Atlas leaned down beside her. “What did they do to my memories?”

Elsie frowned. “What happened?”

“They’re still in my head. The Vex.”

Her eyes widened. She stood bolt upright, fear and fury overtaking her face. “No. No, they couldn’t have-- damn it, what the hell is wrong with them?” 

He frowned. “Huh?”

She grabbed his arm and hauled him off to what he called the “brain dumping room,” where his neuromap was slowly updated, bit by bit, back into his mind. Elsie angrily pointed him into the chamber, and he sat down, hissing at the jolt in his interfacing port.

Elsie punched at the console. “I was worried about that,” she told him. “That they would try something like this. This is exactly why Ana and I agreed to give you a failsafe against orders from the others.”

Atlas tightened his hands and cursed at the flood of jumbled memory. “What?”

“When the autopsies were performed on your human body, the Vex had infected your mind. You saw that, didn’t you?”

“What?” He looked at her in alarm.

She tapped something else, and he could suddenly remember. He shuddered in horror.

“I’ve been trying to keep an eye on you, and all of this, but they did this anyway. They tapped into that connection between them and your consciousness.” She sounded cold. “I wanted to keep the affected neurological memories out of your mind. You’d lose some of your memories, but you wouldn’t have the Vex in your thoughts. Apparently, they went against me, and did it anyway. You’re not being converted, not physically, but they’ve put the memory of your conversion back into your head. And whatever else the Vex might have started to do to your mind…”

“What does that mean?” Atlas could smell salt. “I’m not being converted, but…?”

“But… I’m worried that your mind might have thought patterns that have been affected by the Vex. Your neuromap might be contaminated. Not enough to kill you, or change who you are, but… I don’t think your neuromap is… entirely human. Maybe it never was, from the moment the Vex entered your body.”

Atlas sighed and closed his optics. “Well. Fuck.”

***

Atlas bolted through the corridors, past panicking scientists and red-flashing lights. The ground shook with the force of… of…

Whatever this was. 

“Get to the chamber!” Elsie was screaming in his comm. “Run!”

“I’m trying!” He staggered, still clumsy, still not used to this strange new body, being a foot taller than before, being broader, being stronger, faster, undying, unaging--

Russian boomed over the facility comms. 

Atlas took the scare as his chance to make a risky shove for a sliding door hissing closed. He slid through and was on his feet in a blink. 

He made it, finally. Elsie and Ana and a few other scientists all in on the secrets were mashing at consoles. 

“Over here,” Elsie urged. She tapped the console and a tiny panel slid out. “Put your chip in there once I’ve finished explaining this. It’ll make half a dozen copies and save your current neuromap. There are enough hidden panels in your body to hide them all, or you can take them and stash them anywhere else. Once you’ve got your copies, you need to run.” She looked at Ana. “We all have to run.”

Ana nodded, frowning. “Rasputin is getting reports from all over the solar system. Skyshock…”

“Don’t worry about it now,” Elsie said fiercely. “Atlas. You know more about the Vex than almost anyone else.”

Atlas nodded.

“I’m worried that they’re behind all of this. Whatever scared the Traveler, whatever is making that… black hole, or whatever…”

“They could be. I don’t know.” They weren’t. He didn’t know how he knew that. He lied.

“If they are, then we need to destroy them.” She tightened her hands. “We’ll start heading south from here. Ana--”

“I can’t leave Rasputin.”

Elsie grabbed Ana’s hands. “You’ll die here.”

“Rasputin will be here.”

“He can’t protect you from the apocalypse, darling.”

Ana leaned in and wrapped her sister in a tight hug. “It’ll be okay,” she promised. “Whatever happens. I’ll see you again one day. I know we will. This isn’t gonna be the end. I believe in you guys.”

Elsie’s vocal modulator hissed static for a second before she took a breath. She looked to Atlas. “Chip.”

Atlas slid his chip free and handed it to her. She put it into the console. After a few seconds, she dumped half a dozen into his hand. 

“You’re good to go now,” she told him. “We need to get out of here.”

“Good luck,” Ana said.

“Light with you,” Atlas said.

She grinned and bowed shallow to him, hands clasped at her chest. He returned the gesture in turn, a sweet touch of shared culture, before the walls shook with a mind-numbing roar.

Atlas bolted from the Bray facility with Elsie at his side.

***

He’d lost count.

He’d lost everything.

It was years. Years and years and years--

Dust creaked his joints, dulled the blue of his metal body. Despite the thick clothes he’d scavenged to cover himself, despite not needing air or food or water, he was miserable.

Elsie was gone. 

Ana was gone.

Everyone he’d ever known was dead.

Even almost every exo he found was a heap of inert metal in the red sand. 

Mars was a wasteland.

He trudged through the ruins of Freehold, half-buried in dust. It had been so beautiful, vibrant. Now it was a city full of death.

He fought through a dune into the meager shelter of a Bray building. He leaned against the wall with a sigh and stared blankly into space. Why was he still even bothering to fight? To run? To live? The world ended. Humanity was lost. He had watched satellites go dark, heard screaming from millions of radio channels, before the shadows moved in, howling and vicious and--

A light blinked.

He looked up. 

The console was on.

Slowly, he approached it. He tapped it, and it flickered to life. Weak, on the fritz, but active.

He inhaled softly in amazement, the first spark of hope lighting in his chest. 

He slid a chip into the console, and force-installed all of the data.

Atlas dropped to his knees, clutching his head in pain, when he put it back in. The sudden barrage of information battered his mind, but he tightened his jaw and let it happen. Seconds ticked by before the pain subsided. 

He jolted upright.

He’d been right. All those years ago.

He could smell salt.

Atlas took a breath and made his way through the city. He let instinct guide him, repressed, reprogrammed memories. Across sand, then down, into the train station. The tunnels.

Salt. 

He saw it.

A gate.

A single Goblin stood motionless in front of it. Idle. Leaves clotted its chassis.

Atlas lunged forward. Just as its red eye activated, he had it in a vice grip. It warbled in alarm before he closed his hand over its belly and shattered the glass of its core. Mind fluid spilled over his fingers. 

He ripped the eye out of the Goblin and marched for the gate. He held up the eye and waited.

The gate flickered to life. 

Atlas took a breath of Martian air and stepped forward.

When he took his next breath, it was thick with flora and salt.

***

It rains.

He stares squinting up through the canopy of leaves, their colors indescribable. Flowers blossom from thick grass, and tiny bugs buzzing around sound like the hum of computers. 

The sky is green. Or maybe it’s yellow, or gray, or brown, or something in between. There are three suns. Or four? He isn’t sure.

Something in his mind says he shouldn’t be here.

Slowly, Atlas makes his way forward. He steps through the flowers, the thick undergrowth and spongy wet soil. The wind carries sounds like music.

It’s a garden, he realizes, noting the tended edges, the walls--

The Vex.

The Vex are the gardeners of this place, whatever it is. 

He’d seen this place before, in fragmented dreams, in echoes of Vex thought protocols altering his consciousness. He can’t place anything, but he knew the red flowers, the green mist. 

He doesn’t know where he’s going. He doesn’t think he needs to.

He wanders, maybe for a few minutes, maybe it’s hours. It doesn’t matter which. 

He stops at the song in the wind. 

There’s a voice, maybe, too. He frowns and kneels beside a pond. A Vex gate lies within.

There’s a man. He’s from another time. Atlas doesn’t know how he knows that. He’s stripping apart a gun, slow, meticulous, muttering to himself. He’s wearing long robes, tattered with wear. 

The image in the gate ripples. A red eye shines in the reflection of the water above the green glow of Atlas’ optics.

He yelps and nearly tumbles into the pond. He whirls to see a Minotaur raising its gun. 

“Shit!”

He bolts.

He doesn’t know where. 

They ripple through space, stepping out from thin air. He dodges them, running blind, pleading silently for help from whatever is listening. The Traveler, he hopes. 

He stumbles.

An agonized cry tears from his voice modulator as a shot blasts his arm. He grabs it, feels the sparks from broken wires, before staggering on ahead.

There’s a gate.

He runs. 

He’s blasted with hot red sand and Vex cries. 

***

He ran from them for days. They hunted him.

Atlas captured one, crushed its core. He dismantled its arm and knit its wires into his, replacing the broken pieces. As a second thought, he took time to add its parts to his body, fixing what time had worn from him. It hurt. It made his head sear with agony, made him see flowers in the corners of his vision. 

He sang to himself to keep himself sane. Songs from his childhood, sung by his mothers as he looked out at the bustling city of Kyoto. He shifted his modulator to mimic their voices, and it kept him from losing what few shreds of humanity he had left. 

The Vex weren’t killing him, he knew it. They were watching. Waiting. Observing. He’d wear himself down. He was a machine, as much as they were, but he was old, broken, fallible. 

His days were numbered. How many there were, he didn’t know. He backed up his neuromap on every chip in his body and kept moving. 

He wasn’t going to be able to keep going much longer.

Red eyes zeroed in.

With a last burst of fear, he bolted into a building. The Vex gave chase. He went down. 

Skidded to a halt.

Dead end.

He leaned against the wall and took a breath. Slowy, he turned and faced the Vex.

A Minotaur slowly approached.

“You’re going to kill me,” he said to it. “You fuckers.”

It stared silently at him.

He slammed his fist forward, apparently taking it by surprise. His hand went through its chassis, and mind fluid spilled out. It hissed as it seeped into the broken cracks of his arm. He didn’t care anymore.

“I’m gonna take some of you bastards with me!” he shouted.

He yanked his arm back and went to punch again. Metal arms grabbed him, though. He howled wordlessly and wrestled with them. 

He fought.

He didn’t win. 

He lay in a heap of broken Vex parts, others closing in. He closed his flickering optics and croaked out a last few words of the song his mothers’ sang together at their vow renewal. 

The air smelled like salt and flowers, and Atlas stopped hurting.

***

“Xen? Xenophon?”

Asher waved his hand in front of the Titan’s face with a frown. “Halley, what’s wrong with them?”

Xen’s Ghost appeared in a shimmer. Her shell slumped. “They’re dissociating,” she explained gently. “I don’t know what brought it on now, but… they do this sometimes.”

Asher softened and took their hand in his own. “Ah. I understand. Trauma… does that.”

Xen said something.

Halley and Asher shared a confused look.

Xen repeated it and shook their head. They blinked their optics, but they had a distant look in them, unfocused and wandering. 

“They’re… speaking Japanese,” Halley said. 

Asher frowned. “I didn’t know they knew it.”

“Neither did I.”

Xen blinked again, and focused their gaze. “Sorry,” they said, though they sounded… off.

“Xen?” Asher asked.

Xen was being too still, too robotic. “We are… not doing great,” they admitted. Asher had noticed that Xen had a touch of an accent, but it was far heavier now. “We’re… letting the Vex part… lead, sort of. Sorry. Emotions are… difficult.”

“Why do you sound different?” Asher asked.

“You were speaking Japanese, Xen,” Halley said softly.

Xen angled their head. “We speak it. It’s our first language. Only one of my mothers knew English at first, so me and my mom, we learned together from Mama…”

Asher stepped closer, eyes widening. “Your… parents?”

“Mhm. Yeah, Mama was from Japan, Mom was from Canada. But I grew up in Kyoto… it was pretty. It was so busy… the City feels like it. Like home.” They smiled a little, eyes distant, thousands of miles and years away.

“Tell me about it?” Asher tried, hesitant. If Xenophon was remembering being not only their life before being a Guardian, but before becoming an exo… he was reeling in shock. This had never happened, as far as he knew. Guardians remembered nothing, and while he knew Xen had some oddities due to the Vex, if it was this deep… 

Xen said something in Japanese again and paused. “I can’t remember how to say that in English. Huh. We can’t… I…” They frowned.

“Guardian, are you okay?” Halley asked, nudging her shell against them. “What brought this on?”

“I… we don’t know.” They tightened their hands in Ashers, looking shaken, uneasy. “We just…”

“Was it that Hunter?” Asher suggested, nodding in the direction the random Hunter had gone after asking Asher for advice on where to find Phaseglass. “Something about them?”

“What was the name of her rocket launcher?”

“The Two-Tailed Fox,” Halley said. “A specialty of Daito.”

“Daito.” Xenophon shuddered and closed their optics. “That’s not right. That’s close, though.”

“Close? To what?”

Xenophon mumbled to themself for a moment before jerking upright with a gasp. “Kaito. That was my name. Doctor Atlas Kaito.”

Asher froze.

Halley froze.

“I remember. We don’t, but I do. It’s here.” Xenophon tapped their chest, the radiolarian core. Their voice was hushed, shaken, nearly frantic. “When the Vex started converting us. They digitized my neuromap. Everything is still here, all of it, my whole life, every memory, I have it, I know it all! Everything is…” They trailed off. They slowly looked at Asher. “Asher. Honey. Can we go to Mars?”

“Mars? What? Why?”

“I need to talk to Ana Bray. And Rasputin. And… I want you to come with me.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I love you.”

Asher stepped forward into their warm arms. He was still confused, uncertain, but the possibilities of this… and even with that aside, Asher cared about them. Xen was his partner, the one person in the solar system who understood him. He felt his chest squeeze and tightened his embrace a little more. “Of course I’ll go with you,” he said softly. “Whatever is happening… you remembering your first life… it’s a big deal. And I care about you. I’ll be with you, Xen… Or… do you want me to call you Atlas?”

Xen snorted. “No, no. We’re Xenophon. He was Atlas. I was? It doesn’t feel like us, but it’s my name… but… Xen is ours.” They hesitated. "This is… weird. Are you okay, Ash?"

Asher frowned. "Why wouldn't I be?"

“Well, your boyfriend just started remembering their past life and having a whole damn existential crisis because they’re part Vex and the Vex kept all my… his memories.” Their voice was dry, but Asher could hear the touch of uncertainty. Something nearly like fear.

Asher huffed and glared up at them, lacking any venom. “As though that’s bad? Xenophon, even aside from my feelings for you, which is certainly a strong factor in how I am handling this, this is an incredible development for any Guardian. Unexpected and unusual as it may be, your nature as resurrected Vex has given you the chance to remember who you were. What the world was like. This is an opportunity unlike anything before.”

Xen chuckled and tugged Asher in close again. “You’re such a nerd,” they teased.

“Hmph!”

“He was a scientist, too.”

“What? Oh. Atlas? You said Doctor…”

“Mhm. He was studying the Vex. Isn’t that funny?” Xenophon’s accent grew thicker again, their touch more idle. “Ishtar. But he… something happened… like you. And the exo program was his only option besides death.”

Asher felt cold and shuddered. He set his hand on Xenophon’s chest, above his radiolarian core. The metal matched the bronze of Xen’s armor. “This… happened to him, too? To you?”

“It wasn’t the Vex, it was… I was stupid. Experimenting, and it got out of hand…” Xen tightened their hand. “Careless. Downfall of so many scientists, huh?” Xen reached up and laced their fingers. They bought Asher’s hand to their face to press an exo kiss to his knuckles. Something pained crossed their face and their voice was raw with emotion. “I… I remember it, feeling it… the Vex in my blood, turning my skin into metal… knowing that I was going to…” They took a shuddering breath and grasped his hand tighter. “We know what you’re going through now. Asher…”

Asher shook his head and cupped their jaw. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. 

“We always worry about you.” They set their other hand at his waist, trying to draw him closer, like they could protect him from his unavoidable death with their own body. “Maybe… maybe we can… map your brain, too, make you an exo?”

Asher managed a small chuckle. “I’m not certain that any of that technology still works, I’m afraid. As far as we know, all information about the functions and processes of neuromapping and exo transfer died in the Collapse--”

“But we know!” Xen’s eyes brightened. “We don’t remember everything yet, and I didn’t know everything about it, but we know a good bit about it! And Ana can help! She was there, she was with me, she and her sister oversaw my transfer personally and managed my memory dumps. She might not remember anymore, but she still has the… the smarts, and Rasputin knows. I got converted there, ‘cause I was experimental, and all that, with the Vex. So maybe we can do something!”

Asher stared baffled for a few moments. “I’m not sure that…” He trailed off.

He’d never dared to hope.

The moment he woke up in the hospital without his arm, he’d known he was going to die. He could feel them in his blood, the dull ache of each inhale that worsened day after day.

But this--

Now--

It had never been a possibility. No more exos had been created since the Collapse. But if Xen really did remember how it worked? 

If Ana Bray, if Rasputin, could piece together what Atlas hadn’t known?

If the facilities could be restored, exo bodies primed…

Could Asher be saved?

Could he have his mind put into a new body? Would that affect his Light? His Ghost was still infected, still silent, cold. Would his body be able to be resurrected, splintering his consciousness, or would his Ghost and his silent Light stay with him in an exo body?

“Ash,” Xen said.

Asher blinked back to the present. “Hm? Oh. Sorry.”

“You were thinking.” Xen chuckled, soft and gentle. “We’d have to do a lot before any real exo transfer could be set up. Think on it, or something, yeah? We can see what Dr. Bray suggests.”

Asher nodded. “That would be wise, yes. It’s… a lot to think about.”

Xen grinned at him and ducked down to kiss him, quick and soft. “This is so weird. Can’t believe this. What are the odds, right?”

Asher scoffed and hooked his hand around their neck to keep them close. “What was it like?”

“Being in the Golden Age?”

“That. And… being human.” Asher cupped their face in both hands. “I’m trying to picture it.”

“Uh… trying to think… I wasn’t this tall, that’s for sure. Japanese by ancestry, but we already knew that much… I had a scar on my lip from a bike accident as a kid. Man, weird to think about having lips.” They snorted. “And like, skin. I had glasses, too. I was… oh, I was a trans man.” They blinked. “Weird. Carried over some of that, then.”

“You do not still feel that way?” Asher frowned in concern. “Whatever pronouns or terms make you most comfortable…”

Xen shrugged. “Vaguely. But Vex stuff, y’know? They is still fine. Still kinda like, a dude but with a bunch of genderless brain cells jammed in there or whatever. So it’s fine. The Vex are… they… they…” Xen’s eyes went distant. “Oh. I know why they found me. Why they did this in the first place. Wasn’t because I was already being converted before I was an exo… this happened way later… after the Collapse.”

“What do you mean?”

Xen murmured in Japanese and pulled Asher in close. They were seeking comfort, he could tell. Asher worriedly gave it, trying to assure them he was there, he was supporting them, with them, all the way.

But their next words still gave him a chill.

“Atlas found the Black Garden.”

**Author's Note:**

> come stop by my tumblr @lesbianeliksni


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